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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'No permafrost stat!',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/04/28.jpg" alt="Pink bluebells" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="diet">
	
	<p>
		Last night, I made two veggie patty and dairy-free cheese sandwiches, each with a pickle, ketchup, and mustard.
		I had one of them for breakfast this morning and one for dinner tonight.
		As a snack when I got home from a my morning meeting, I had 104 grams of a mixed fruit and vegetable juice with 123 grams of pretzels.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Like you said, there are different types of caching, each with their own characteristics and advantages.
			I think it&apos;s also interesting to note that there are different machines doing caching too.
			You discussed three types of caching the Web server can do to speed up requests by not making extra requests to the database server.
			If we didn&apos;t use the faster Web server caching, we could probably get the database server to cache some responses for us, which wouldn&apos;t be as fast as the Web server caching them, as while the responses wouldn&apos;t need to be looked up in the database any more, they&apos;d still need to be requested by the Web server and sent by the database server.
		</p>
		<p>
			More importantly though, we can leverage Web <strong>*browser*</strong> caches.
			Unlike database caches, Web browser caches can be used in tandem with Web server caches.
			By sending good cache length headers, we can reduce the number of requests to the Web server, speeding things up even further.
			Of course, you can&apos;t rely on Web browser caches alone, as they don&apos;t apply when multiple people request the same page the same way Web server caches do, and not everyone keeps their caches until they expire.
			For example, I have my browser set to clear all temporary data, including caches, every time I close it.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<p>
		While I was away from Minetest, versions 5.0.0 and 5.0.1 were released.
		As far as Minetest Game goes, the two are only two commits apart, and neither commit impacts mining statistics, so I didn&apos;t need to examine them both separately.
		However, I needed to be sure that there weren&apos;t new stats added that I wasn&apos;t aware of.
		I didn&apos;t notice any new stats, but then I realised I hadn&apos;t seen permafrost in the list of potential stats picked up by the code I wrote to detect everything that even might be countable.
		I looked through again, specifically looking for it, and sure enough, it wasn&apos;t there.
		So I checked the code on Minetest Game.
		The developers got rid of the surface-permafrost-to-bare-permafrost conversion when digging!
		Awesome!
		It&apos;s one less stat to count, but honestly, it was a lame conversion, as there was no way to convert it back.
		You therefore couldn&apos;t place surface permafrost anywhere.
		Surface permafrost was only allowed to exist in pristine locations, and only where it&apos;s very cold.
		I&apos;m glad to have the conversion removed before a stable release, too.
		Otherwise, I&apos;d need to make it a permanent part of my stat list.
	</p>
	<p>
		Of the five stats added by the last unstable version I looked at, cave ice was the one I liked the least though.
		Cave ice converts to regular ice when mined, and can&apos;t be converted back, so it&apos;s got to be counted.
		The difference between the two is only used by the map generator though, and gameplay-wise, they&apos;re meant to be the same.
		The one converts to the other when mined just to make them stackable together.
		They&apos;re even visually identical.
		That star was left in though.
		So 5.0.0 adds the blueberry, blueberry bush, pine bush, and ice stats.
		(5.0.1 doesn&apos;t add any stats, as mentioned above.)
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		It turns out it was a family of four that were getting baptised yesterday.
		They didn&apos;t get confirmed as members of the church at the baptism, unlike the unwilling child whose baptism I saw.
		Instead, they got confirmed in today&apos;s sacrament meeting.
		I think that the difference was that these people were joining this ward, while the child was being dragged into the ward in Eugene.
		The Eugene ward has a baptism font, while this ward doesn&apos;t, so this ward uses the Eugene ward&apos;s building to perform baptisms.
		The child was probably confirmed right after the baptism because they were already in their home ward&apos;s church building.
		These people probably waited so as to be confirmed by their own home ward.
		Another difference I noticed was that while three people placed their hands on the child&apos;s head, five placed their hands on each head of this family&apos;s members.
		I&apos;d thought that perhaps the number three was symbolic of the trinity when I saw the child&apos;s baptism, but it appears it may have just been chance.
		So what determines who will place their hands on the new member&apos;s heads?
		After confirming each member, they gave them a blessing before confirming the next member.
	</p>
	<p>
		First, they confirmed the father.
		They blessed him that he would be the patriarch of the family and serve as a leader.
		Second, they confirmed the mother.
		They blessed her that she&apos;s serve as a protector of her children, that she&apos;d be a nurturer in general (not specifically directing this nurturing toward her children), that she&apos;d have an increased capacity to feel love, and that she&apos;d care for her children.
		Next, they confirmed the son.
		They blessed him that he&apos;d follow Jesus, have charity, and love and protect his sister.
		Finally, they confirmed the daughter.
		They blessed her to know her &quot;older brother&quot; Jesus is with her and wants to get to know her better.
		Um.
		Isn&apos;t Jesus all-knowing in their religion?
		So doesn&apos;t he know her as intimately well as is inhumanly possible?
		They also blessed her that she&apos;d be a caregiver.
	</p>
	<p>
		Maybe I was the only one that felt it, but their choice in what blessings to give each member seemed very sexist.
		The women were blessed to be caregivers.
		The mother was to take a protective role, but only in regards to her children, and you know how mother bears are depicted.
		One of the most feminine things to do is to protect one&apos;s children from harm.
		The father was blessed to be a patriarch.
		Again, leadership roles go to the men in this church.
		And the son is blessed as a protector.
		Protection when not directed specifically toward one&apos;s own children seems to be a masculine role, though protecting one&apos;s own children also isn&apos;t exclusively feminine and is considered to be macho when done by men.
		I guess the son&apos;s blessing was the one to stand out least to me as sexist, but the sexism was still very much visible.
	</p>
	<p>
		The main other event for the main part of the meeting was that the four missionaries currently in the ward each gave talks.
		That said, I didn&apos;t recognise one of their faces, and the missionary that came to my home last time definitely wasn&apos;t among them.
		Where were they?
		Were they from another ward or something?
		The first missionary to talk was one of the regulars to come to my home.
		Well, I say that he&apos;s one of the regulars, but he&apos;s only been to my home once.
		He&apos;s partnered to the other regular to come to my home though, who partnered to the previous regular to come to my home, who in turn was partnered to the previous one before that.
		So they swapped out missionaries, they visited me once, then had a couple visits where they temporarily swapped partners.
		So I think I&apos;m going to be seeing a lot of this one.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, so this first regular gave a talk on trials.
		They had a very interesting take on them.
		If you break commandments and don&apos;t follow Jesus, Jesus punishes you by sending you trials.
		If you don&apos;t follow Jesus, he&apos;ll make life hard for you.
		However, if you do follow Jesus and obey commandments, he&apos;ll reward you.
		And just how will he reward you?
		By sending you trials to help you learn and grow!
		So no matter what you do, Jesus is going to send you trials.
		I want to call Jesus indifferent to what you do, but that&apos;s not an accurate description.
		Jesus&apos; motivation changes based on your actions, so he very much cares.
		However, his actions don&apos;t show this care.
		He&apos;s going to do the same thing either way.
		And here&apos;s the kicker.
		Either way, trials are going to be hard.
		But either way, you can learn and grow from hardship.
		In other words, you can&apos;t win or lose this game by obeying or disobeying Jesus.
		What you do with Jesus&apos; words isn&apos;t going to make a difference in your life.
		(That said, your <strong>*afterlife*</strong> is an entirely different story, and your actions could impact that, maybe.)
	</p>
	<p>
		The second missionary was the other regular to my home.
		I forget what they said their talk was on, and it looks like I didn&apos;t get it in my notes.
		However, it was very tangent to trials.
		This missionary told us that Jesus sends us trials because without trials, we wouldn&apos;t remember him.
		This paints Jesus as an attention-whore that just can&apos;t stand to be ignored.
		He can&apos;t just leave us alone and let things run smoothly, because then he wouldn&apos;t be on our minds.
		Also, Jesus makes us weak specifically so we&apos;ll humble ourselves before him.
		We can&apos;t have a relationship on even footing, or anything.
		He&apos;s got to hold all the power in the relationship.
		If this were a relationship between two humans, the church would see this for what it is: an abusive relationship.
		But they don&apos;t see that when it&apos;s Jesus that holds all the power.
		And finally, they said that our trials aren&apos;t about us.
		They&apos;re about what Elohim wants from us.
		We&apos;re stuck dealing with garbage for our creator, and have to be shaped into what he wants us to be instead of what we want to be.
		Joy.
	</p>
	<p>
		The third missionary gave a talk on enduring until the end.
		They said that repentance and baptism gets us onto the path Jesus wants us on, but we still have to walk that path.
		We need to follow the words of the scriptures and the words of church leaders.
		And although this missionary has a point, I&apos;d like to point out that only men are allowed to even be church leaders, so you&apos;ve got to follow the words of select men, while the words of women will never be as important to the church.
		It&apos;s pretty messed up.
	</p>
	<p>
		The final missionary gave a talk on the prophets.
		They didn&apos;t have anything particularly noteworthy about them to record here in my journal.
		It was about mundane things, such as how active some of them were and how young others were.
		They did tell us though that the current prophet says we&apos;re running out of time, which is why they&apos;re hastening the church&apos;s efforts.
		We&apos;re running out of time ...
		Are they claiming the end times are upon us?
		That&apos;s an interesting prediction.
		I don&apos;t know for sure that that&apos;s what they&apos;re saying though, so I can&apos;t really hold it against them.
		And of course that lack of accountability through vagueness is probably intentional.
	</p>
	<p>
		Partly because I forgot to bring my notebook to take notes in, partly because yesterday made me realise that I already give too much of my time to studying this religion, and partly because this was another one of those meetings in which the men get separated from the women leaving me - being nonbinary - with no obvious place to go, I just went home instead of attending the second part of church.
		Seriously.
		This segregation is really getting to me.
		Probably more than it should.
		But the women here are told they&apos;re not good enough to hold the priesthood, and have to be home makers instead.
		The role of the women is to be baby factories and caregivers.
		And the men are told they have to take up the leadership role.
		What if the women want to bring home the bacon and the men want to be home makers?
		It&apos;s not as common as the other way around, but it does happen, and there&apos;s nothing wrong with that.
		Y&apos;know, except that in either situation, people are creating more humans that will have to one day die.
		But that happens no matter who takes what role, if they decide to have children.
		And why did the missionaries decide they wanted to meet with me twice each week instead of our previous once per week schedule?
		If I recall, it happened soon after I told them that their scriptures told me not to rush into getting baptised.
		Of course, with the extra meetings, it&apos;s slowing down my reading of their scriptures, and I told them I&apos;d need to finish reading before even considering baptism.
		So this actually would slow down the process.
		That said, it&apos;s pretty obvious that their religion is false, so it&apos;s not like I&apos;d be getting baptised either way.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="prayer">
	<h2>Prayer impressions log</h2>
	<p>
		I prayed that I&apos;d be reading the ninth chapter of Genesis, and that I thought it was the chapter in which Jesus tells Noah that he can eat the animals.
		I also said that I was interested to see what Jesus had to teach me today.
		After praying, I saw my wallet being unzipped in my mind.
	</p>
	<p>
		I prayed about how Noah&apos;s cursing of Canaan made no sense, seeing as Canaan wasn&apos;t even involved in the situation Noah was angry about.
		I also prayed that Noah&apos;s anger didn&apos;t make any sense.
		After praying, I saw in my mind a whirlpool, from an angle beneath the water, looking up at the surface.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="loan">
	<h2>Loan</h2>
	<p>
		The person that borrowed \$600 $a[USD] asked me to make them an authorised user on my credit card account.
		They don&apos;t want an actual card, and actually told me <strong>*not*</strong> to give them one, telling me they know themselves well enough not to trust themself with it.
		But they want to use my account to help build their credit.
		I tried to scare them away.
		I told them Discover won&apos;t allow me to add authorised users without said users&apos; Social Security numbers.
		Instead of scaring them away though, they actually <strong>*gave me*</strong> their Social Security number!
		Wow.
		That&apos;s totally not safe.
		What if I steal their identity?
		To the best of my knowledge, that shouldn&apos;t impact my own credit though, so I&apos;ll do it.
		If it doesn&apos;t hurt me to help my workmate, I might as well do what I can.
		When I tried to add them to the account though, Discover wouldn&apos;t let me without their data of birth.
		So I reported that to them via email.
		<del>They&apos;ll probably give me that though too.</del>
		<ins>And they gave me that too.
		So I added them to the account.</ins>
	</p>
	<p>
		They also said they want me to hang onto some of their money for them.
		Like, they&apos;re not yet repaying me, but I guess they&apos;re using me to make it difficult for them to access some of their money so they won&apos;t spend it?
		I don&apos;t know.
		But later, when I got home from work, I saw an email from them saying they needed \$450 $a[USD].
		<del>The wording was very unclear though, and the way they said it, they might be going to ask for the \$450 $a[USD] after they&apos;ve paid half of what they already owe.
		I&apos;m really not sure.</del>
		<ins>It turns out they want me to bring that to work tomorrow.
		I guess I&apos;ll do that.
		Now they owe me \$1050 $a[USD].
		They&apos;re not getting any more than that from me.</ins>
	</p>
	<p>
		They also asked what my timetable is for when I want to be repaid.
		I&apos;m not trying to rush them though, so that&apos;s what I told them.
		If they keep borrowing without repaying, I&apos;m going to have to cut them off at some point, but I&apos;m not overly worried about getting the money they&apos;ve already borrowed back quickly.
		In fact, this is a bit of an exercise in trust for me.
		I can&apos;t trust very well.
		Loaning them this money and not worrying too much is something that might help me with that issue.
		The last workmate that borrowed money from me paid it back.
		They even borrowed a second time and paid that back too.
		The more times this sort of thing works out, the more maybe I can relax.
		Sure, they&apos;re getting some help from me, but I&apos;m sort of getting something from them as well.
	</p>
	<p>
		I should mention that this borrowing workmate is the one that offered to make me something out of fabric if I bought the fabric for this next part to make sense.
		They asked me to either &quot;consider splurging on a golf game one Saturday or Sunday two or three checks from now&quot; or buy the fabric so they could make me something.
		I never did buy the fabric last time.
		I was going to, but decided against it.
		They know I don&apos;t like to be called a &quot;he&quot;, yet they call me that anyway.
		It&apos;s tolerable from a workmate, but it&apos;s not acceptable from a friend.
		Which means we&apos;re not friends; we&apos;re not close.
		I&apos;m not going to have them spending their time making me things when we&apos;re not even close enough for that.
		I guess they assume that because I would lend this much to them, that I must feel we have a tight bond.
		But we don&apos;t.
		As for the golf game, I played dumb about it.
		I pretended to think they wanted me to buy them a game for themself.
		I assumed they actually want me to go with them and pay for my own entry fee.
		Again though, we&apos;re not friends, so it doesn&apos;t make sense to hang out outside of work.
		And even if it did, my Saturdays and Sundays are tied up.
		In the mornings, I&apos;ve got religious stuff, either with the missionaries or at church.
		And in the evenings, I work.
		<ins>A bit later, they wrote back and reported they&apos;d wanted me to join them for a game of golf or bowling, my choice of either with or without their partner.
		So I pretty much told them what I said above, though without mentioning that my weekends are spoken for; I&apos;d cancel religious garbage to hang out with a friend.
		They call me a &quot;he&quot;, and that&apos;s not something a friend would do.
		I don&apos;t hang out with people that do that.
		I also tried to emphasise the fact that I didn&apos;t mean to be rude, but I don&apos;t think there&apos;s any way that&apos;ll be taken kindly for me to express that.</ins>
	</p>
	<p>
		<ins>They also asked me, as a hypothetical, how much I would try to save if I chose to have or adopt children.
		They know I&apos;d never have children.
		Adoption is the only way I&apos;d ever have children in my custody.
		I find it mildly offensive when people try to get me to consider what I would do if I decided to have children, so I answered based on if they&apos;d just asked about that, and ignored the adoption option.
		I mean, they know I&apos;m not opposed to adoption and would consider it if my partner wanted it, so they could have just asked about if I adopted.
		So I told them that the decision not to have children is such a core part of who I am that if I were to want to have children, I would have to not be me.
		And as such, all bets are off.
		I don&apos;t know who this person would be, so I don&apos;t know how they&apos;d think or behave.
		Seriously.
		It&apos;s such a core part of who I am that I knew I would never have children the moment I learned how they were created, which was in either late elementary school or early middle school.
		I&apos;ve known all along that I&apos;d be childless.</ins>
	</p>
</section>
END
);
